The third instalment in the SC saga was released in 1996 for
Dos
and Macintosh. This game was designed by a completely different
developer called Legend Entertainment, a decision that has caused
some controversy. Toys for Bob who created the original games
were not interested in developing a new game for Accolade under
the terms they offered. The game structure was superficially
similar to SC II, consisting of an adventure game and a
HyperMelee.

Adventure game

The SC3 adventure game differs significantly from SCII, even
though the base idea is the same. You still travel the stars,
meeting aliens and fighting enemies. While conversing with aliens
works as before, both navigating in a solar system and between
systems is much more automated. In system, you navigate between
different planets simply by clicking them by mouse. There is no
lander subgame, but instead you can place colonies on planets.
You then rely on colony production for fuel, ships and currency.
For travelling between stars, the 3D map from SC1 has been
brought back in a larger scale. The map can be rotated or kept
still and different display modes can be turned on and off. These
will help the player by showing fuel storages, colonies and other
facts about certain star systems. Navigating is again done with a
click and is instantaneous.

Navigating within a star system. Simply use your
mouse to click on the planet you wish to visit.

First the planet view., then a
colony placed on planet, generating fuel,
resources, crew and ships.

Story wise, the plot casts the captain from SC2 leading a
mission
to another quadrant. The overall goal is to stop a mysterious
force known as the Eternal Ones, hell bent on destroying all life
in the universe. Because of the collapse of Hyperspace, a new
flagship capable of Warp Bubble travel has been built. The player
brings with him members from 10 races from the previous game, who
at the beginning are scattered and must be found. The new Kessari
Quadrant also has a slew of both indigenous and foreign races,
who must be dealt with while the Captain searches for clues on
how to defeat the Eternal Ones.

Hyper Melee

Hypermelee once again allows the player to fight ship battles
without bothering with the adventure mode. It features ships from
all new races and the old races included in the story mode. It
also features two vision modes, the traditional top down mode and
a pseudo3D mode.

A view of the melee in pseudo3D where an Ur-Quan
Dreadnought has just incinerated an enemy ship.

Criticisms and controversies

SC3 has been criticised on numerous occasions for a slew of
varying reasons. First and foremost among these is that the team
writing the story and creating the game did not contain the
original creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. The story has in
general been said to borrow conversation trees from SC2 too
heavily and resolve too many of the original questions left
behind by SC1. Many specific grievances have been brought up as
well, ranging from rewriting and partially ignoring the end of SC
II to having a rather unfulfilling ending sequence.

The game was also criticised for its change in appearance. The
splashes of colour seen in SC2 had been turned into a much darker
and greyer palette. The conversation screens had been redone with
animated puppets, to the horror of many fans. Many races, such as
the Syreen and Pkunk, bore only a slight resemblance to their
appearance in SC2.

The syreen puppet from the SC3 conversation screen
upset many
fans of Talana.

The reduction of space travel to the click of a mouse was not
unanimously welcomed, nor was the colony subgame which was seen
as boring and impractical. There were also complaints regarding
the very large 3D map, since the large amount of stars could make
navigation challenging.

Another major point of criticism in the game was its scripting
system. If tasks were done in an unexpected order it would
sometimes break down, leaving the player waiting for some key
event that failed to materialise. Many players were unable to
complete the game without first finding a walkthrough so that
they could finish their tasks in the correct order.

Melee wise, the pseudo3D system was not very popular, but
since
it could be turned off it wasn’t a big problem either. Much
worse were the facts that half of the SC2 ships had been left
out, the other half had been rebalanced and the new races
introduced often had unbalanced ships. This made melee a less
enjoyable experience to most players.